How To: Take A Sick Day When You Are Not Sick

(From Lilit Marcus, Editor-in-Chief of SavetheAssistants.com, a Web site devoted to helping people navigate the unpleasant office environments.)

1. Always call your boss to tell them you’re not coming in; never e-mail. “An e-mail just seems really fake”. Some companies your boss might say, “Great: you’re on e-mail. Just work from home today,” which negates the purpose of taking your elective sick day.

A telephone call comes off as a little more truthful and a little more urgent. When you call, try to time it so that you can leave a voice mail — talking about the fact that you’re sick opens it up to the possibility of follow-up questions and debate.

2. Don’t be too specific. “Say ‘I have a migraine’ or ‘I have food poisoning,’ but don’t go into details. A lot of people get caught up in the details of the lie and feel like they have to specify what their symptoms are and such. But the more you talk, the faker it sounds. If you have the stomach flu, you’re probably too busy barfing to answer a lot of questions about your condition.”

3. Food poisoning is a good fake ailment. ”It’s quick; it lasts a day; people get grossed out by it; and it’s happened to them. So food poisoning is the way to go. Plus it’s really non-specific. It doesn’t say anything about a recurring condition that’s going to happen again. It’s a fluke. No one knows why it happened or what it was that they ate, so it’s a really good mystery disease.”

4. Don’t post your exploits from your sick day on Facebook. Remember this story? Don’t get caught in your lie by putting too much information where people can find it.

“As people have things like more and more social networking sites, or you have a blog that people in your work know about, you need to be really really careful about indicting in any way what you were doing on your day off — because you will get busted”.

5. Don’t come in with a sudden tan or a brand new wardrobe the next day. “Keep your head down and do your work. People are always a little skeptical, and you have to just pretend like you really were at home sleeping all day.”

6. Pick a random Tuesday or Wednesday for your fake illness. At a lot of companies, there are mysterious sick waves on the day after a long weekend or on a really beautiful day in the summer. You can get away with that once in a while, but if you only come down with the flu on really beautiful Friday afternoons in the summer, everyone will be on to you.

Taking off a day in the middle of the week will also make it less likely that you have 400 emails to sort through all at once when you come back from your elongated holiday.